Current bone grafting procedures include the use of autogenous bone as a graft material (i.e., “autografting”). Use of autogenous bone, however, subjects a patient to increased pain and discomfort, and an increased risk of infection, because it requires the patient to undergo additional surgery to recover the autogenous bone for use in the grafting procedure.
Current bone grafting also includes the use of bone from a donor as a graft material (e.g., “allografting” from the same species or “xenografting” from a different species). Both allograft bone and xenograft bone, though from natural sources, subject a patient to the risk of disease transmission and graft rejection.
A third option in the field of bone grafting includes the use of synthetic bone graft material. Some synthetic bone graft material is mixed with autograft, allograft, or xenograft bone, and thus still subjects a patient to the risks above. Other disadvantages to current synthetic bone graft materials are: (1) the poor resorbability profile of many synthetic bone graft compositions, which leads to low proliferation and remodeling of new bone throughout the defect site, (2) low bioactivity or other osteogenic effects, (3) the inability to mold or form the material into a desirable shape during intraoperative surgical procedures, (4) the inability to maintain the desired placement at the defect site, (5) lack of antimicrobial properties, and (6) the inability to combine bone healing properties of different synthetic materials into a single implant.
As such, there is a great need in the art for an improved synthetic bone graft material that is moldable, highly bioactive, and presents an optimal resorbability profile that increases the proliferation and remodeling of new bone throughout a defect site.